Thursday, December 29, 2011

The proponents of shareholder value maximization and stock-based executive compensation hoped that their theories would focus executives on improving the real performance of their companies and thus increasing shareholder value over time. Yet, precisely the opposite occurred. In the period of shareholder capitalism since 1976, executive compensation has exploded while corporate performance has declined.

“Maximizing shareholder value” turned out to be the disease of which it purported to be the cure. Between 1960 and 1980, CEO compensation per dollar of net income earned for the 365 biggest publicly traded American companies fell by 33 percent. CEOs earned more for their shareholders for steadily less and less relative compensation. By contrast, in the decade from 1980 to 1990 , CEO compensation per dollar of net earnings produced doubled. From 1990 to 2000 it quadrupled. (Forbes)

This article is titled above. This problem though mainly concern publicly traded companies.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Your spamming me you’re not on a mailing list you idiot ! You sent me an email remember . Make sure you stir up a lot of controversy about us the more the better we needed some drama gets good blood flow going about the new product launch . Your sites amateur at best my son could put together a better site than yours and you run PAX ?? Wow , Ill put my marketing team on a smear campaign of you and your site and your emails , I have about 125 dedicated people to run PR , Blogs , Articles , Videos you have no clue who I am . Thanks again

About 10,000 people came to Beit Shemesh last night to protest against religious extremism in Israel in general and this Jerusalem-area city in particular. The issue came to a head publicly after television coverage last week showing ultra-Orthodox extremists harassing Na'ama Margolese, 8, the daughter of immigrants from North America. The rally took place next to her school, Orot Banot.

Margolese became a focus of attention after Channel 2 news broadcast a story Friday night showing her facing a gauntlet of abuse from Haredi men and boys as she walked to school. The conflict comes against the backdrop of various efforts to separate men and women or to exclude women from the public space. Last week the case of Tanya Rosenblit, who refused demands by Haredim that she sit in the back of a public intercity bus, attracted major public attention. Over the Sukkot holiday this fall, efforts were made to separate the large numbers of men and women who crowded the streets of Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox Mea She'arim neighborhood. Another recent flashpoint is the general absence of images of women on billboards and bus advertising in the capital, and efforts to counter that absence. (Haaretz)

Apparently some Israeli cannot wait to turn their country to Saudi Arabia. Maybe they should start doing "virginity test" as well.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

A checkpoint run by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) at Baba Amr, a poor district in the southwestern part of Homs, Syria's third-largest city: It is the first liberated zone in central Syria. Within these three square kilometers, everything is different. It is a topography of terror and, for many, a beacon of hope. (Spiegel)

"At the first FSA checkpoint, the men salute and introduce themselves by stating their rank and the name of their unit. They have weapons, but only two uniform jackets, which they put on in turn to pose for photos. There are armed guards at almost every corner, and small units of a dozen men each are positioned behind sandbags and barricades at various points along the perimeter of the neighborhood, which is home to more than 50,000 people. Families from the neighborhood bring food to the men, who are armed with Kalashnikovs and a few RPGs. Baba Amr is protected by a total of 500 soldiers under the command of the defected Lieutenant Colonel Abdul-Razak Tlas, a distant nephew of the former defense minister." (Read more)

An Australia man has contracted HIV after getting a tattoo while on vacation in Bali.

Australian health authorities are urging Australians who have gotten tattoos or body piercings on the Indonesian resort island to seek medical advice and consider getting a HIV test, according to news reports.

They also reportedly notified the Indonesian health authorities. (Global Post)

Monday, December 26, 2011

Ben Ali ran away and Tunisia celebrated. They just had a successful free election in a long long time.

Mubarak resigned but the regime remnants stayed. Egypt is in the middle of three month long election process. The Islamist parties are about to take 67% of the electoral results. Fighting between protesters and the military still on going sporadically.

Yemen revolted and Saleh almost got killed earlier after a bomb attack on him. He promised to leave Yemen for Saudi Arabia next February.

Revolts in Bahrain and Algeria were extinguished.

Qaddafi is dead along with most of his vile sons. NATO bombed the shit of his military. The transition to a free country has begun.

Syria is in the midst of emerging civil war. Assad will be thrown out of power next year. Hezbollah will have to find a new host because the new power in Syria will kick them out for supporting the rotten regime.

Morocco and Jordan had a few protests and their Kings hurriedly arranged some reforms.

Iran is still trying to acquire nuclear weapons. They have had to endure a series of assassinations of their nuclear scientists and various "industrial accidents" throughout this year.

Notable deaths:

Steve Jobs. He was our modern time Edison and an asshole. But now everybody thinks its important to be an asshole to be successful - they forgot that there are plenty of assholes in this world but only one Steve Jobs.

Kim Jong Il. The dictator of North Korea couldn't die soon enough.

Ralph Steinman. He died three days before his Nobel Prize for Medicine was announced.

Dennis Ritchie, the co inventor of C programming language (a foundation of modern computing) and Unix operation system passed away.

Christopher Hitch died. God bless him for this “Europeans think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they've taken as their own, as their representative American, someone who actually embodies all of those qualities [Michael Moore].”.

Valvac Havel died and you asked "who?"

Japanese was hit by a Tsunami, which triggered the worst nuclear catastrophe after Chernobyl.

The Prime Minister of Greece and of Italy resigned under the tremendous pressure of bankers and international community.

South Sudan is the newest country in the world.

UNESCO admitted Palestine as full member. US stopped paying their UNESCO 2011 fees and completely fucked up UNESCO budget. Israel stopped as well.

Palestine submitted its bid for UN full membership. US threatened veto.

Netanyahu is still a dick.

The UN (French powered) kicked Ivory Coast Laurent Gbagbo's ass for not relinquishing his power after losing an election. He is now being processed at the ICC.

Osama bin Laden got an eye shot and now sleeps with the fishes.

The US established a based in Australia's Northern Territory.

England refused to join the latest pact within the European Union to cede more control of each country member's budget to Brussels. 26 other countries out of 27 joined the pact, more or less.

Occupy movement sprung out around the world but mainly big in the US. And they are happily pepper sprayed by the freedom Police.

The group Anonymous made their mark this year.

Pakistan is still fucked. Right now their relationship with the US has hit a new low after the bin Laden raid under their nose and the killing of 24 Pakistani border troops by the NATO forces. The country also went gaga over a naked cover page of one of its actress in FHM India. I hope Imran Khan will win the Presidency and sort this country out. Enough of this Bhutto dynasty nonsense.

The US troops finally left Iraq. Peace, freedom and order have finally arrived in Iraq (sarcasm).

Kenya has been mired by several kidnappings of its tourists by Somalia based militants.

Famine hits Somalia and nobody really gives a damn.

Christchurch, New Zealand was devastated by an earthquake.

All Blacks won the Rugby World Cup.

Manchester City is at the top of UK premier league at Christmas time for the first time since 1929.

Komodo Island was voted in as the 7 finalist of the new 7 natural wonders of the world.

UK Royal Wedding - the boring one of Diana's two sons has married a commoner.

Putin has completed his switcheroo. He is going to run for Russian Presidential election next year. Russia is being hit by large scale protests against him.

NASA ended their space shuttle program this year. Good riddance.

The Guardian killed the News of the World over phone hacking scandal and in the process of bringing down the young Murdoch's empire.

UK has a five day riot over nothing.

Chille has been hit by multiple student riots over tuition fees and everything else.

Brazil has their first female president.

Burma is in the middle of opening its political system.

Google+ was launched this year and nobody cared.

Merkel, Merkel, Merkel.

Iran released the two America idiots who thought hiking near Iranian border was a smart idea.

The Colombian Army killed FARC top leader. Good riddance.

Mexico continues its downward spirals towards failed state.

Penn State's football assistant coach loved little boys and everybody else in the school sport system was too cowardly to do anything about it.

NASA launched Curiousity, a bad dass rover destined for Mars. It has laser.

Scientist have shown the strongest evidence yet for the existence of Higgs Bosson, a particle predicted by physics Standard Model.

Minecraft 1.0 was released.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was sold 775 million dollars in 5 days. It's the fastest sales record in any entertainment category (including movies, music, pornography and games)

Nokia released its first wave of Windows Phone 7.5 powered phones. Nice hardware and OS but nobody cared.

Lindsey Lohan posed naked for Playboy. Nobody cared.

Android tablets are still crap. That includes Kindle Fire.

HP got out of smart phone and tablet business in a hurry. They fired their one year CEO and hired Meg Whitman.

RIM was hit by worldwide messaging outage for days. Their products are still crap.

Apple released iPhone 4S with Siri and the first thing people do is abuse it with stupid questions.

Microsoft sold a million XBOX 360 with Kinects over US Thankgiving holiday. It is a mind boggling results for a 7 year old game console.

It is still true that "there still really is no “tablet” market — just an iPad market."(Marco Arment)

Jon Corzine (ex Senator, ex Governor of New Jersey) fucked his firm MF Global by losing in betting for European sovereign debts. They still haven't figured out where 1.2 billion dollars of client's money went.

Miracle of the year: Spider: Turn of the dark stops injuring its actors and on the mark of being profitable.

Terror came to Norway by the name of Anders Behring Breivik. 70 people, mainly youth, were killed.

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Merry Christmas to you, believers and infidels. May you have a peaceful day and hopefully you are not stuck in overcrowded airports. 2011 has been a remarkable year and hopefully next year brings more joy and better news.

International experts are calling for food in Scotland to be fortified with vitamin D, in an attempt to cut the large numbers of people who develop multiple sclerosis at sunshine-deprived northern latitudes.

MS levels in Scotland are some of the highest in the world, and many believe vitamin D deficiency, caused by lack of sunlight and poor weather which keeps people indoors, is partly to blame. For half the year, nobody living in Scotland gets enough UVB rays from the sun on their skin to make adequate amounts of vitamin D and many do not eat enough of the foods, such as oily fish, that contain it. (Guardian)

Lawmakers are in session right now to vote on a measure that would make it a crime in France to deny that the 1915 events amounted to a genocide, a measure that could put France on a collision course with Turkey, a strategic ally.

Turkey wants the issue to be left to historians and has lashed out at France, warning that it will withdraw its ambassador if the measure becomes law. (Hurriyet)

The custom of Jewish families dining out at Chinese restaurants, especially on Christmas Day, has long been a joking matter. “According to the Jewish calendar, the year is 5749,” one quip goes. “According to the Chinese calendar, the year is 4687. That means for 1,062 years, the Jews went without Chinese food.” Even Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan made light of the tradition during her Senate Judiciary Committee hearings. Granted, Chinese restaurants are typically among the few businesses open on December 25th, but it turns out that there are historical and sociological reasons why these two cultures have paired so well. (Smithsonian)

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

More than 10,000 soldiers have deserted the Syrian army, sources say, with as many as half the conscripts not reporting in the last three call-ups.

According to Western intelligence agencies, even though the top brass is still loyal to President Bashar Assad, lower-level officers are deserting in large numbers, and in some cases, whole units have deserted en masse. (Haaretz)

Nobody wants to die for a wrong cause. The Assad Regime is such a cause.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

As a teenager, Kim Jong Un was sent to a German-speaking school in Bern, Switzerland.

He is said to speak competent English and German.
Former classmates at the Liebefeld-Steinhölzli school, which Kim Jong Un is believed to have attended between 1998 and 2000 under the pseudonym "Pak Un," told the Washington Post they remembered a quiet, occasionally awkward boy who loved action films and combat video games, and was a fiercely competitive basketball player. (Global Post)

And ladies, he is apparently single; that would make him the most eligible bachelor in the world. What mother wouldn't want their daughters to marry the next Great Leader.

What they are not taking into account is that everybody's grown up – the weapon of shame can no longer be used against women. When they subjected young women to virginity tests one of them got up and sued them. Every young woman they've brutalized recently has given video testimony and is totally committed to continuing the struggle against them.

The young woman in the blue jeans has chosen so far to retain her privacy. But her image has already become icon. As the tortured face of Khaled Said broke any credibility the ministry of the interior might have had, so the young woman in the blue jeans has destroyed the military's reputation.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

U.S. authorities are building a politically explosive case that Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, finances itself through a vast drug-smuggling network that links a Lebanese bank, a violent Mexican cartel and U.S. cocaine users.

Federal prosecutors Tuesday charged Ayman Joumaa, an accused Lebanese drug kingpin and Hezbollah financier, of smuggling tons of U.S.-bound cocaine and laundering hundreds of millions of dollars with the Zetas cartel of Mexico.

“Ayman Joumaa is one of top guys in the world at what he does: international drug trafficking and money laundering,” a U.S. anti-drug official said. “He has interaction with Hezbollah. There’s no indication that it’s ideological. It’s business.” (ProPublica)

Scientists believe they may have caught their first glimpse of the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle that is thought to underpin the subatomic workings of nature.

Physicists Fabiola Gianotti and Guido Tonelli were applauded by hundreds of scientists yesterday as they revealed evidence for the particle amid the debris of hundreds of trillions of proton collisions inside the Large Hadron Collider at Cern, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva. (Guardian)

Higgs boson was predicted by physics Standard Model. If they confirm that it exists, then the Standard Model stands otherwise they have to rethink it.

The culmination of his efforts is "Desertec", a largely German-led initiative that aims to provide 15% of Europe's electricity by 2050 through a vast network of solar and wind farms stretching right across the Mena region and connecting to continental Europe via special high voltage, direct current transmission cables, which lose only around 3% of the electricity they carry per 1,000km. The tentative total cost of building the project has been estimated at €400bn (£342bn). (Guardian)

They started their first installation in Morocco. This shall be interesting. This is their website, http://www.desertec.org/.

Perhaps the most important way SustainUS is trying to achieve this goal is not by interrupting meetings, but by linking up with like-minded young people from China -- members of the China Youth Delegation. The two superpowers are the world's biggest emitters of CO2 and other greenhouse gases and play the most important role in UN climate negotiations. "If we can bring young people from our two nations together and develop common views, perhaps that helps us to be heard," Johnston says.

In Durban, however, things now look different from Copenhagen: China surprised the world by announcing that it might become part of a legally binding global agreement. This contrasts strongly with the US position in Durban. The Obama administration is effectively paralyzed when it comes to action on climate change. It has no chance to get any agreement through Congress, which is dominated by Republicans who deny the findings of climate scientists and act on behalf of the powerful fossil-fuel lobby.

These rulers live in Beijing and they know directly the impact of unregulated development that poison their water and air. There is a concept in Chinese culture about "your health is your wealth".

The European trade was initiated by Mr. Corzine late in the summer of 2010. The new chief executive explained the bet to a small group of top traders, arguing that Europe would not let its brethren default. In just a few months, the trade swelled to $6.3 billion, from $1.5 billion.

Europe’s debt crisis, meanwhile, continued to flare, raising questions about whether some of the Continent’s bigger economies, Spain and Italy, might be ensnared in the maelstrom.
In August, some directors questioned the chief executive, asking him to reduce the size of the position.

Mr. Corzine calmly assured them they had little to fear.

“If you want a smaller or different position, maybe you don’t have the right guy here,” he told them, according to a person familiar with the matter. He also told one senior board member that he would “be willing to step down” if they “had lost confidence in me,” Mr. Corzine told Congress on Thursday, although he said he had not intended to make a threat. (NY Times)

It is funny to see how people are impressed by confidence game, even by experienced and presumably talented board. This is because we keep hearing successful bets and amazing results by people that showed an insane amount of confidence. But this is an effect of selection bias.

The problem lies in how we get these stories. If the end result is great, then the confidence game get affirmed - whenever it blows up spectacularly, we label them differently, we call it hubris. But hubris is just the other side of confidence.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

"I wonder if this is an agenda to shift the blame on to countries who are not responsible [for climate change]. I am told that India will be blamed. Please don't hold us hostage. We will give up the principle of equity."

China's chief negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, lambasted the EU in a passionate speech, saying: "Who gives you the right to tell us what to do?"

With tempers rising and the talks minutes from being abandoned, the chair, South African foreign minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, ordered China, India, the US, Britain, France, Sweden, Gambia, Brazil and Poland to meet in a small group or "huddle".

Surrounded by a crowd of nearly 100 delegates on the floor of the hall, they talked quietly among themselves to try to reach a new form of words acceptable to all.
But it was Brazil's chief negotiator, lawyer Luis Figueres, who came up with the compromise, proposing to substitute "an agreed outcome with legal force" for "legal outcome". This, said an EU lawyer, was much stronger, effectively meaning "a legally binding agreement" (Guardian)

Up to 50,000 people braved the cold and snow on Saturday to turn out for the largest ever protest against the rule of prime minister Vladimir Putin.

Bolotnaya Square, across the river from the Kremlin in central Moscow, was filled to overflowing with thousands standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the bridges and along the riverfront leading to the site. Tens of thousands of police and interior troops were deployed around the area, but protesters had been allowed by officials to gather in an unprecedented show of discontent. (Guardian)

Friday, December 09, 2011

European leaders, meeting until the early hours of Friday, agreed to sign an intergovernmental treaty that would require them to enforce stricter fiscal and financial discipline in their future budgets. (NY Times)

UK and Hungary balked at this arrangement.

The decision by Cameron will transform Britain's relations within the EU. Other projects, such as the euro and the creation of the passport-free Schengen travel area, have gone ahead without British involvement. But it is the first time since Britain joined in 1973 that a treaty that strikes at the heart of the workings of the EU will be agreed without a British signature. Britain signed the 1991 Maastricht treaty after winning an opt-out on the single currency and the social chapter. (Guardian)

Thursday, December 08, 2011

The best kitchen appliance on my countertop is ugly, overpriced and not for sale in any store. In fact, the Thermomix isn't for sale in this country. But at the risk of sounding like a vegetable-peeler pitchman holding forth in a supermarket aisle, I am here to tell you that this $1,400 German widget will do everything a blender, a processor, an electric mixer, a steamer, a Crock-Pot, a timer and a kitchen scale can do, but better, and all in one small spot. (WSJ)

Problem is, the Fed never actually doled out $7.7 trillion to banks: Much of that $7.7 trillion figure doesn’t reflect loans made, but loan guarantees — the amount the Fed would be responsible for in case of default — and loan limits. Certainly, the Fed positioned itself to take on considerable risk if need be, but the central bank was not handing out $7.7 trillion in cold, hard cash to banks. Politicians and the news media alike have erroneously conflated the two, using “loan guarantees” and “loans” interchangeably. The Fed would have given out $7.7 trillion to banks only in the unlikely scenario that the banks asked for the maximum possible loans and that every one of them subsequently defaulted. (Washington Post)

It is understandable for people to confuse the term "loan" and "loan guarantees" especially when it is paired up with 7.7 trillion dollar figure.

Once ranked among the bluest of blue chips, Kodak shares sell today at close to $1. Kodak's chairman has been denying that the company is contemplating a bankruptcy filing with such vehemence that many believe Chapter 11 must lurk just around the corner. (Kodak)

I wonder how much brain power and money being wasted in this once great corporation. Imagine all those MBAs being shuffled through corporate machinery in order to produce negative growth.

Soon after Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the director general at Cern, emailed staff about next Tuesday's seminar on the most sought-after particle in modern times, rumours hit the physics blogs that the lab might finally have caught sight of the Higgs boson.

I wrote last week that the heads of the two groups that work on the Atlas and CMS detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will give the talks. That in itself is telling – usually more junior researchers present updates on the search for the missing particle.

Last month, scientists at the lab said that if the particle exists, it was most likely to have a mass somewhere between 114 and 141GeV (gigaelectronvolts), where one GeV is roughly equivalent to the mass of a proton, a subatomic particle found in atomic nuclei. (Guardian)

Tuesday, December 06, 2011

I'd say that in about half of my business conversations, I have almost no idea what other people are saying to me. The language of internet business models has made the problem even worse. When I was younger, if I didn't understand what people were saying, I thought I was stupid. Now I realize that if it's to people's benefit that I understand them but I don't, then they're the ones who are stupid. (HBR)

I love the example he gave

"You should meet this guy with the SIO. He's sort of this kind of social entrepreneur thinking outside of the box in the sustainability space and working on these ideas around sort of web-based social media, and he's in a round two capital raise in the VP space with the people at SVNP."

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently provided representatives of the Middle East Quartet with a new proposal on borders for a Palestinian state and security arrangements that Israel would be provided in a peace agreement. The Quartet, which is comprised of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia, has demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu provide a counterproposal, however Israel has refused to do so, saying that any counterproposal should be presented in direct negotiations with the Palestinians. (Haaretz)

Monday, December 05, 2011

For centuries experts held that every language is unique. Then one day in 1956, a young linguistics professor gave a legendary presentation at the Symposium on Information Theory at MIT. He argued that every intelligible sentence conforms not only to the rules of its particular language but to a universal grammar that encompasses all languages. And rather than absorbing language from the environment and learning to communicate by imitation, children are born with the innate capacity to master language, a power imbued in our species by evolution itself. Almost overnight, linguists’ thinking began to shift. (Discovery)

Repealing a ban on women drivers in Saudi Arabia would result in ‘no more virgins’, the country’s religious council has warned.

A ‘scientific’ report claims relaxing the ban would also see more Saudis - both men and women - turn to homosexuality and pornography.

The startling conclusions were drawn by Muslim scholars at the Majlis al-Ifta’ al-A’ala, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council, working in conjunction with Kamal Subhi, a former professor at the King Fahd University. (Daily Mail)

If women don't die as virgins, heaven will not have enough supplies for the suicide bombers.

The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.

The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.

The loans worked out brilliantly but it is still an insane amount of rescue.

Germany’s productivity has gone way up. Normally, that would mean their currency appreciates, which lessens the advantage that gives their economy [in exports]. But unlike virtually every other advanced country in the world, the manufacturing share of output in Germany has risen over the last 20 years. And part of the explanation is that, just as in China, Germany has an export-oriented growth strategy fueled by a currency that’s undervalued. But that undervalued currency has been at the expense of Southern Europe. And the main point of the piece is that there’s no obvious way for Southern Europe to grow, and if they can’t grow, they can’t balance their budgets no matter how much austerity they engage in.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), has demonstrated supremacy with the voters in the nine governorates that voted this week. They were followed by the Salafist Al-Nour Party, which is running, under the Islamist Alliance for Egypt bloc, on the same electoral lists as Al-Asalaa Party and Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiyya’s the Building and Development Party. Meanwhile, the liberal Egyptian Bloc seems to be trailing in third.

The Islamists’ initial electoral success has been achieved in cities where liberal political forces have their highest density, such as Cairo and Alexandria. This indicates the coming rounds of the elections could well see the Islamists take a stranglehold on parliament. (El Ahram)

Nobody is surprised about the Muslim Brotherhood's strong results. The big surprise comes from the Salafist party, Nour (which means "light" in Arabic), which makes the MB looks like a hippie party. It is a hardcore Islamist party that pretty much wants Egypt to become a version of Saudi Arabia. The speculation right now says that the Nour party could get 15% to 20% of the total votes.

Combined with MB's 30-40% share, the Islamists can easily pass any minor laws that only requires simple majorities to pass.

I was wrong a couple a days ago in saying that results of the election round would not be published until the last round completed (dumb mistake).

These early results generated mad scramble n the various secular or liberal leaning parties to merge or put their coalitions in order. Last night I read the election result of a district in Cairo with 200K or so valid votes. The winner won by 125K votes and the rest of the secular parties won less than 5K votes each. In combination these small results add up to 40K votes.

This district is a wealthy and liberal part of Cairo. In more closely contested seats, these 40K votes will count.

Anyway, these results make the Muslim Brotherhood as the projected big winner of the election. They can use the more conservative Nour party as a stick to scare the Liberal parties to move closer to their positions in producing new laws and regulations.

Confirmed melanoma on his lungs (but cannot be removed because it is small and hard to get at) and in his leg (most of which they removed yesterday). He'll start a new Phase II vaccine clinical trial in January, once he's healed from surgery. We're praying for a miraculous response and dealing with the hard possibility that he may have less than a year left. So, we're spending our time praying for and believing in miracles and living life with GUSTO! No more tears around here, folks. We are getting on with the business of LIVING and being grateful for TODAY!

I quoted this message from a Facebook post by my friend's whose husband (who is also a friend) is battling cancer right now. Occasionally they drop by here to check out what's happening. If you guys read this, much love from Cairo and godspeed.